I talked with Eddie on the phone tonight. He seems to be doing fine, and got his bags back late last night. He’s not pleased with his bed, which is your standard twin-size dorm bed, and I imagine that he’s been folding himself up in it in order to keep his lower legs from hanging out of the end. He’s been running around doing all sorts of cultish Walmart things, such as attempting to go to an Eagles concert last night and seeing Gretchen Wilson in concert today and negotiating the aquisition of a Walmart kimono for me from the Japanese employees. The bed is so empty without him, but I’m enjoying being able to sleep with the TV on all night. I like waking up in the middle of the night and watching reruns of Leno at 3am. Thankfully he’ll be back on Saturday night, and then I won’t be alone here anymore.

Yesterday afternoon I took Pickle to my mother’s house after making a quick stop up to work so that the crew would be able to pet her. Everyone at work thought she was adorable, except the store manager. At my mother’s house she ran all over the place and did a war-dance for Mom and Nanny, something that Mom had never seen before and thought was fucking hysterical. Pickle played with Tuffy for a bit and ran over Jazz’s tail, and we confirmed that she will come running out of wherever she’s hiding if we play with a squeaky toy and she’s in earshot. We’re definitely going to need to buy one for our house because she’s facinated with still making noise with the baseboard heating and I have a feeling it would be an easier method of retrieving her than crawling under the desk and coffee table every 10 minutes.

Tonight I spent a bunch of money on Eddie’s birthday presents. I know that they won’t be here by Saturday, but at least they’ve been purchased and are on their way. Hopefully they’ll all get here early next week because I hate to make him go a week before he gets to open his gifts. It sucks not having something to open on your birthday.

Our back door is currently unlocked. In fact, it doesn’t have a lock. It doesn’t even have a fucking doorknob at the moment. Comrade came down this afternoon and painted it, so it’s open and drying for the entire night. This isn’t very fun, because tomorrow neither of us will be home to make sure he doesn’t poke around in here. Adding to the list of assinine bullshit this man has spewed from his mouth is his comment that we waste time on our computers and that we should take a weeklong vacation because he wants to come in and paint the rooms and work on some of the molding in the bathroom. He’s also annoyed that none of our windows had the mysterious serial numbers that he was looking for; the seals in his are leaking and he’s getting condensation between the panes, and I guess he needs the serial numbers for some reason but none of the windows in the house have them. Tough shit for him.

Aside from the Polish invasion today has been pretty normal. It’s been raining so there’s no drive-in plans for us. We drank a pot of coffee then switched to tea because we had no more sugar. Eddie made a pot of Kraft dinner for lunch and we ate that while playing WoW. We’ve finally hit level 40 and gotten our mounts, and we’re actually about halfway to 42 right now. We did a bunch of grinding and questing this afternoon, and maybe we’ll do some more tonight. We went to Pizzeria Uno for dinner, stopped at WalMart to buy some new bulbs for the truck’s head and tail lights and new wipers, then went to Petco to play with the ferrets. I can’t believe how tiny Pickle is compared to the ones they’ve got there. Eddie said that if we were in a new place we’d have taken one of them home with us.

I talked with my Dad this morning. He invited us down for a cookout this week at his house, which is cool. I did tell a tiny lie to him when he asked what I was doing, I told him I’d just gotten out of bed, but didn’t reveal that I was sitting on the toilet. Some things a father just doesn’t need to know.

We’re still on the hunt for a car. Eddie made a few phone calls yesterday, and I talked to my dad while I was at work. Unfortunately Dad has no leads on anything in our price range, and we’re trying to avoid going to a dealership because we don’t want to have loan payments and higher insurance payments because we’d need full coverage. We’re hoping to check out something Eddie found on Craigslist tonight after he gets home, and with any luck it’ll be a decent one.

Right now I’ve got 2 virus scanners running on my computer to try and get all the shit that seems to have exploded in my hard drive over the past week or so. I have no idea where all this shit came from, but seemingly overnight everything seemed to go pear-shaped and so I’m trying to rid my pc of all the baddies. So far, it’s a slow process. Once that’s done I’ll head into the bathroom with a bottle of blonde dye for phase one of my monthly application of bright red dye.

I had another class reunion dream the other night; this time the reunion was held in the parking lot at WalMart and everyone sat in lawn chairs. In this dream I hung out with a bunch of people that I actually hung out with in school, and we all were wearing casual clothes, which was much more comfy than the high heels in my other dream.

I stumpled upon this site this morning, and I swear that if we ever end up renewing our vows and having a 2nd wedding ceremony I will be buying a dress from them. They’re gorgeous. And made to my measurements to boot.

We had a rather busy day today.

First, I found out that school is having a Halloween costume contest on Monday, so we’re allowed to dress up on the condition that those of us who are in wet labs and are required to wear lab coats can still wear our lab coats over our costume or integrate it. I spent the afternoon in Walmart looking for something that I could turn into a 50s-style nurse uniform, and checked out the patterns the had for something in there. Unfortunately they had no white skirts, and while I did find a pattern that would have worked perfectly, they had no good white fabric to use, and I left empty-handed.

While I was at Walmart, Eddie gave me orders to call my mother, who was at the ER with my grandmother. Poor Nanny has a full-blown case of pneumonia and will probably be in there for a couple of days, we’re figuring she’ll be out on Saturday. Tomorrow we’ll stop up there with some flowers and a Grumpy Bear balloon or something.

After Walmart we went to Target, because Eddie wanted to find some decent pants and a dressy shirt for his costume as a manager. After seeing the prices of some of the slacks and shirts, he settled for a nice beat-up pair of jeans, knitted cap, and a Grateful Dead tee for a costume as a Dead-head. I tried to get him to dress as a little emo boy, but he didn’t feel like having to explain it to everyone who asked what he was supposed to be. While they did have a snazzy Knight-Rider costume that Eddie drooled over, Target also had no white skirts/dresses for my nurse costume, so I left empty-handed once again.

From Target we went next-door to the Hometown Buffet, since I wanted to have a celebration dinner for getting a perfect score on my Law final last week and getting a 98% for the whole course - highest in the class. Once we were certain that my stomach wasn’t going to freak on me, we went to Savers to see if they had anything nursey there. I managed to find a knee-length white skirt and a cheap lab coat, and decided that instead of being a nice nurse I’d have much more fun being an insane psychopathic deranged nurse, grabbed a cute black wig, and then headed back to Walmart so Eddie could pick up 2 more props and I could get some red paint to make some blood spatters on my clothes. Eddie picked up a wallet with a chain, and enough spices to make a baggy stuffed full of oregano that he’s going to offer to his coworkers.

Now we’re home. We watched Survivor, and CSI is a repeat so I don’t feel bad about missing it to post this. I’m not sure if ER is a repeat. I’ve got a quiz tomorrow in class, and our midterm is on Tuesday. We’re still not sure when Eddie’s mother is coming down; she’d originally planned on arriving tomorrow, but things didn’t come together properly and so she’ll be getting things done sometime next week, we hope.

After being in this neighborhood for almost 4 years now, I finally had an extended conversation with a neighbor - the guy across the street. A conversation during which I learned the following:

• he doesn’t like Comrade and thinks he and his wife are assholes
• when I sit at my desk wrapped in a towel after a shower, I look topless from his living room
• he’s seen Eddie walking around naked
• he’d much rather see me naked and see Eddie as often as he has

I’ve got to ask Mom if Wal*Mart employees can use their discount on prescriptions so I can get my BC refilled next week. I’m hoping it’s not going to cost some insane amount of money for it because I’m pretty happy with it and the complete lack of side-effects.

Today we pick up Mom and Brian at the airport. Eddie wants to eat lunch at the airport. We’ve got to bring both cars, and we’ll probably drop Ed’s off at Wal*Mart and just take one to the airport to avoid paying twice for parking.